Page 115 of Cruel Kiss

"What's the thing?"

"It doesn't matter right now." He looks at me. "I'm going."

I set the cold coffee down very carefully. "You're going. To a trial. Where the verdict is whether you live. And the evidence is all stacked against you?"

"If I don't go, I confirm the story. A pakhan who runs is a rat. Runningisthe confession, Cali. The only way to answer the accusation is to stand in the room and answer it."

"I think you're really misusing the term 'the only way' there, Ronan," I mutter sarcastically.

But he's not in a joking mood. "No. There is no other option." He says that like he's already made peace with it, which is a helluvalot worse than if he were scared. "I go in. I fight it out. And it ends however it ends."

Fine. If that's his choice, then I know him well enough to know there's no way I'm talking him out of it. He's as stubborn as I am when it comes to matters of ethics.

But it takes me approximately zero seconds to figure outmy'only way,' too.

"Alright," I say. "You go. But I'm going with you."

"No."

"I'm not asking."

"Calista." He stands up so fast the stool scrapes. "It's a room full of men who want a reason to kill me. You are thereason. You walking in is?—"

I hold up a hand, and to my surprise, he stops talking. "You keep telling me what I am," I say. "The operator. That's the word the woman in gray used at the wedding. And Lev. And Mercer. And a bunch of others, I'm sure. Everybody in your whole world has a word for me, and they all throw that word around like it means I'm just some dumb, blunt object. A tool to be wielded by others." I stand up, too, so we're level. "Well, guess what? Iamthe operator. It's time somebody used that word correctly. Starting with me."

"Cali—"

"Let me show you something."

I flip open my laptop. It's still logged into the founder's instance, where I've had it running since Mercer left the folder on my counter. I turn it so he can see.

"Lev's frame," I say, "centers on the burner phone. Mercer's whole case against you is built on that burner, and the map of locations tying you to all the various incriminating scenes. The cigar bar. The Brighton Beach wedding. On and on like that. It puts a phone at your shoulder over and over. Lev's made it so there's basically a big Ronan Signal blasting into the sky for the FBI to find."

"I know what it looks like."

"You don't know what I found." I point at the screen. "Watch the pings against your calendar. Your firm calendar, specifically, the one Crosby had access to, because he's a founding partner and nobody questions a partner putzing in his own scheduling system." I drag the two datasets on top of each other, the way I did with Todd's Spotify and his FindMy, a lifetime ago. "The burner moves with yourschedule.Not with you. With thecalendar. Every ping lines up with a meeting that was on the books. Whoever built this pulled your calendar and put the phone where the calendar said you'd be."

He leans in. I watch him start to see it.

"Now, look at the one night that breaks the thread."

I zoom. There's a gap in the pattern, a night the burner sits still in a place it shouldn't, a night the calendar has nothing on it.

"Navi's shooting," I say. "That wasn't a scheduled meeting.Grigorcalled it. Nobody put it on your calendar, because nobody schedules an ambush with a fucking Google invite. So the burner didn't know to be there. It sat in the wrong place all night while you were in the ICU covered in your cousin's blood." I pull up the next tab. "And I can prove where you actually were. Because we have footage from the hospital cameras. There's a timestampedrecord of Ronan Akov sitting in a plastic chair from ten until four, and the burner is nowhere near it, because the burner only knows what your calendar knows."

I sit back, so proud of myself I could do a little jig.

"That's the crack in the frame. That's how you gut the whole thing." I look at him. "In front of the room."

He's very quiet.

"You want to bring that," he says slowly. "And show them?"

"Exactly. I'm the only person alive who can stand in a room full of men who've never seen a spreadsheet in their lives and walk them through a timeline until the frame falls apart in their hands. You can't do it. Grigor can't do it. Some lawyer can't do it. It's mine." I hold his eyes. "You used my machine once without asking me. Now, it's my turn to use itforyou. For once, let me stand next to you and do the thing I'm good at. Don't take it and use it behind my back.Askme."

For a long moment, he doesn't move. Then something in his shoulders comes down, the whole rigid architecture of him giving way an inch at a time.

And, to my surprise, he kneels, as if he's proposing to me.